Child Grooming: What Parents Need to Know
Warning signs and ways to protect children and teens from grooming in the modern world
Barbara Wright
9/2/20251 min read
13 Tactics Groomers Use That All Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know how grooming works in order to protect their children, teen, and young adults. Groomers are able to slowly and methodically:
Target a specific person or “type” of person by age, gender, and appearance.
Build trust with the child, teen, or young adult, and their families and communities to easily gain access to the child, teen, or young adult.
Position themselves as a particularly strong and safe presence in the young person’s life.
Find ways to spend time alone with the child, teen, or young adult
Isolate a child or young adult from their families, caretakers, peers, and friends
Ask the child, teen, or young adult to keep secrets from their families, caregivers, peers, and friends
Establish a pattern of unnecessary touch, such as back patting, massaging, putting an arm around them, and hugging.
Expose the child, teen, or young adult to sexual and/or age-inappropriate conversations and/or media.
Present lavish gifts to the child, teen, or young adult without an appropriate occasion for doing so - often asking them to keep those gifts a secret from others.
Maintain frequent contact with the child, teen, or young adult via social media or text messaging.
Often emotionally identifying with the child, teen, or young adult, acting more like a peer or friend than an older adult.
Take excessive interest or engagement in media for children, teens, and young adults like video games, music, and movies, for example.
Spend an excessive amount of time around young people by positioning themselves in situations like scouts, counselors, education, sports, and more.
These are only some of the ways groomers work. Parents need to establish and maintain open communication with their children, teens, and young adults to be able to pick up on these and many other indicators.
